AN ART PATRON.
“Dear me, how interesting!” said Lady Despard.
It was the third day after Doris’ arrival, and they were sitting at breakfast in a small room, beautifully cool and shady, and furnished with an elaborate simplicity which, while it avoided all garish color, was fresh and bright. A great bowl of roses stood in the centre of the table, from which rose a long fountain of perfumed water. Curtains of the faintest blush-pink threw a warm tint upon her ladyship, who, in her morning gown of delicate chintz, looked like one of the Dresden shepherdesses which stood on the mantel-shelf. Doris, in her white morning frock, with its deep black sash, was the only patch of decided color—if white can be called a color—in the room, but, beside Lady Despard’s rather insipid prettiness, her fresh young loveliness looked like one of the roses in the bowl.
She looked up from the coffee cup she was filling from the great silver urn with a faint smile of curiosity. In three days she had learned all that there was to learn of Lady Despard’s character, and had grown to like her. As for her ladyship, she had already taken to the beautiful girl and her quaint, graceful ways and soft, musical voice, and, twenty times in each of the days, had congratulated herself and blessed Mr. Spenser Churchill on having sent her such a treasure.
“Really very interesting!” she repeated, turning over the note she was reading, and regarding it with a pensive smile. “It is from our friend, Mr. Churchill, dear,” she said; “one of his charming little letters. The good that man does in a quiet, unobtrusive way, is really astounding!”
“What has he been doing now?” asked Doris, quietly.
“Why, he has written asking me to help him in assisting a young friend of his who has had a great deal of trouble and all that. He is a great musician—that is, he ought to be great, you know—but he is poor and friendless, and Mr. Churchill wants me to take him by the hand. He says that I have such immense influence in the arts and musical world that I can do anything. Of course that’s nonsense; that is only his nice way of putting it. But there’s the note. Just read it out, dear.”
Doris took the letter and read it. It was a charming little composition, as Lady Despard had said, and in the pleasantest way told the story of struggling genius, which only needed Lady Despard’s patronage to rise to the heights of success and fame. Might he bring his young friend to see dear Lady Despard? Perhaps, if he might suggest, and her ladyship was disengaged, she would kindly ask them to dinner. He was quite sure she had only to know his dear young friend, Percy Levant, to feel an interest in him for his own sake, and the sake of the art of which dear Lady Despard was so distinguished a patroness.
Charmingly worded as was the epistle, Doris, as she read it, felt a strange and vaguely indefinite want of faith in it; an incredulity for which she at once took herself to task, as she reminded herself that Mr. Churchill was only doing for the young man that which he had done for her.
“It is a nice letter,” she said, handing it back. “Shall you ask him, Lady Despard?”